KANO SANRAKU

original name Kano Mitsuyori born 1559, Japan died Oct. 30, 1635, Kyoto Southern Barbarians, one of a pair of six-fold screens attributed to Kano sixth-generation member of the famous Kano family of painters to the Japanese shoguns. He produced some of the greatest screen paintings of the Azuchi-Momoyama period (15741600). Sanraku was the disciple and adopted son of the leading painter of the day, Kano Eitoku, and like him excelled in large-scale decorative designs executed in bold, sweeping lines and brilliant colours against gold-leaf backgrounds. He painted many folding screens and sliding panels, used to decorate the interiors of temples, castles, and palaces. Much of Sanraku's work still remains: Birds of Prey, on the screens in the J. Nishimura collection, Kumamoto City; legendary Chinese figures on a pair of screens in the Tokyo National Museum; and Trees, Flowers, and Tigers, on the walls of the Tenkyu-in chapel, Kyoto (designated as a national treasure). Sanraku also introduced a subject that became popular with later Kano artists, historical figures selected from the Chinese book Ti chien t'u shuo (1573; Illustrations of Exemplary Emperors; Japanese trans., Teikan zusetsu, 1606).